


To Think of You and Smile

by Springray



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Death, Chronic Illness, Chronically Ill Remus, Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Remus Lupin & James Potter Friendship, learning to cope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 03:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21570250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Springray/pseuds/Springray
Summary: Sirius has died, and Remus is left in the aftermath of the tragedy. It's not often someone dies on their 17th birthday, and Remus isn't sure he'll be able to cope with the loss.nonmagic au
Relationships: past Sirius Black/Remus Lupin - Relationship
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	To Think of You and Smile

The first stage of grief is denial. That didn’t quite cover the emotion, in Remus’s eyes. He couldn’t deny something he hadn't registered had happened in the first place. 

A tear leaked out of his right eye, cascading down his cheek and getting stuck in the corner of his mouth. Another followed, and he watched numbly as it fell onto his hand and made a tiny splashing noise. He focused harder, wondering why he was crying. Did he feel anything? No. So why were there tears?

He could feel Peter glance at him, nervously chewing on his nails, his hand moving up and down slightly on his teeth. Remus didn’t look at him. James was sitting on the couch to Remus’s right, staring straight ahead as his jaw grinded his mouth closed tightly.

“You won’t be expected in class for the next few days, of course. I suggest you all stay together for comfort in this time of grief,” Remus could vaguely hear McGonagall as she spoke to them. His tears stopped and he noticed the ticking of a large grandfather clock behind the wooden desk McGonagall was sitting at. The noise grated on his ears and he waited for the professor to stop talking so he could leave this room, this horrible prison where everything he had known to be true was being turned upside down. James coughed.

“You all go and get some rest, now.” McGonagall told them kindly, though Remus didn’t register any of her words.

He stood up abruptly, his knees knocking against the plush cushions, and he darted frantically towards the door. He needed to breathe again.  
He instantly regretted it when he walked through the door and reality started seeping into his bones, and he staggered slightly until he felt a hand grab his arm to steady him. He looked up to see James silently watching him. His chin twitched as he blinked stoically. 

This really, really couldn’t be happening. Just last night Remus had seen Sirius run back from the convenience store holding milkshakes for the four of them, laughing when Remus reached out to grab one and Sirius pulled them away suddenly. His eyes had had so much life in them. He wasn’t gone. Because if he wasn’t here, then where was he? Where did he go, when he was here so vibrantly, so loudly, just mere hours before?

He felt James tugging him out of the building, into the fresh air of the afternoon sky. The sun blazed uncomfortably on Remus’s back as they walked to a little nearby park. Remus collapsed on a swing and stared at his hands. They had been holding Sirius’s hands yesterday, when they had snuck into the courtyard to be alone during lunch. Sirius had stolen a piece of his chocolate and Remus had scowled at him before bursting into a grin when Sirius made a stupid, cheeky face and ate it teasingly in one bite. Sirius’s idiotic face came into the forefront of Remus’s mind and he blocked it out, kicking off the ground of the playground and swinging into the too bright sky. He wished he could fling himself into the sun until his body was burned to a crisp and he wasn’t in this disgusting alternate world anymore. Surely this wasn't the real world. Surely this was a dream.

His legs grew tired and he felt his feet drag against the woodchips. He realized his shoes weren’t on and he was getting blisters, so he pushed his feet further down into them to feel the pain. It didn’t even register in his mind. As the swing slowed to a stop, he saw James lying on the bench, his eyes staring blankly at the sky, unmoving. Remus didn’t say anything; there was nothing to say. Out of all the words in the English language, he couldn’t find one single word to fill the silence. He stood up again, and James’s head moved to look at him. 

“I need to go,” Remus told him. James nodded and went to join him, not needing to ask what Remus had meant. Peter didn’t move from where he was sat on the play structure.

The walk was surreal. There were colors and words and signs and Remus didn’t understand any of them. A person was standing in a costume, waving a sign for a store Remus had never noticed before. He watched as the man twirled it in his hands, dancing slightly. Remus looked away again. How could someone be there, standing so unaware that the world was ending? He felt a bizarre urge to yell at him, tell him his best friend, his… person, was gone, and no one should look like they were fine when nothing in the entire world was fine.

They walked on. At the intersection, Remus saw the cars moving in front of him and thought about the way they moved and how easy it would be to step in front of them. He could be gone, just like that, and never feel anything again. He took a step forward.

“Remus!” James shouted, grabbing his arm again. He looked into James’s eyes and saw the sheer panic splashed across his face. “I can’t lose two of you,” his voice cracked and Remus stopped looking at him guiltily.

They crossed the intersection when the light turned green, like they were supposed to. Remus couldn’t help but wish a car wouldn’t notice the light had changed and run him over anyway. It didn’t happen. Remus’s legs were starting to ache, but he couldn’t stop moving. If he stopped moving, something might tell him this was real, and it couldn’t be real. He kept moving. They reached an ice cream store and James pulled him inside, and the cool air blasted onto them as they went up to the register.

“Do you think they’ll offer us free ice cream if we tell them our best friend just died?” Remus asked nonchalantly. James looked at him, horrified, and then they both started laughing breathlessly. An old man in front of them turned to see what the commotion was, and Remus felt himself smile politely at him. The man leaned in conspiratorially.

“It’s my wife’s birthday, and her favorite ice cream is from this gross little store,” he told him.

Remus grinned, completely not in control of his actions. “I hope she has a great time on her birthday.” He was amazed at how easy it was to talk to people he didn’t know, like all his social anxiety had melted away. James started talking to the woman behind the counter, asking for mint chip for himself and chocolate for Remus. 

Remus whispered loudly, “it’s not too late to ask for free ice cream.”

James shoved him and told him to shut up, although they were both still kind-of-laughing. Remus wondered what was wrong with himself. They thanked the woman profusely, more so than normal, and left the shop only to feel the hot air blow back onto their faces. They walked next to the large road, feeling the whoosh of air every time a car dove by. They weren’t talking. They passed a laundromat, and then a dry cleaners. Useful, Remus thought to himself. People could take all their clothes that needed cleaning at once.

His legs felt more like jelly the more they walked, until he told James they should probably turn around. As they neared the park again, the rest of the walk blurring by too quickly to notice, James started singing dancing queen under his breath. Remus was confused for a moment until he heard the words ‘only seventeen’ and felt his heart crack open a little bit. He threw his ice cream into the gutter, watching as it melted slowly before hurrying to catch up with James, who had stopped singing and had laid face down into the grass. Peter was nowhere in sight and Remus didn’t want to bother James, so he went back to sit on the swing and stared thoughtlessly at the tree that had grown near the playground. 

He and Sirius had climbed a tree similar to this one at a block party in Sirius’s neighborhood when they were probably no more than six. His mother had forced them to be there, wanting to make a good appearance for the neighbors, but Sirius had tugged Remus away from everyone and up into the safety of the branches of the tree. They had climbed, higher and higher, until they were peering at the ground through the thick leaves as if it were miles away, laughing excitedly with each other.

Remus brought himself back to the present when the memory became too much, and moved to sit on the bench where the sun beat into his neck. He hoped it would give him a sunburn. Time moved so slowly, until he blinked and apparently an hour had already passed. Surely that couldn’t be right.

A little kid came to the playground with her mother in tow, and Remus and James seemed to make the mutual decision to leave the park. They walked back to their dorm, which was blessedly empty, and both moved automatically to lay on Sirius’s bed like they had millions of times before. Somehow, this time was different but Remus couldn’t quite place how. Oh right. Sirius was dead.

They stared at the ceiling together in silence until Remus felt tears start to leak down his face again. They fell into his ears and left them uncomfortably wet, so he pulled the throw off the edge of the bed to wipe his face, realizing too late how much it smelled of Sirius. It was too much. He had to leave again, the air inside was too constricting and he didn’t think he could bare to be here a moment longer, not with all of Sirius’s things glaring at him from everywhere they were strewn across the room.

“I can’t… I don’t… I have to…” he tried to say, but couldn’t seem to get passed the first few words.

“It’s okay,” James said dully. “You should go for a run, or something.”

Remus almost laughed bitterly at that, but managed to keep silent. His legs were killing him, he wasn’t sure he could even walk out of this room much less go for a run. He tried anyway, deciding at the last minute to bring the throw with him. He pulled it around his shoulders and left the building, down the stairs and into the neighborhood around the school. 

A low stone wall curled into the back of a neighbor’s house, and Remus found a nook that hid him from view so he could watch the shadows of the houses grow and move across the street. He could hear the clattering of plates and laughter as families all around him got ready for dinner, and he felt bile rising up in his throat as he thought to the day before yesterday, when Sirius had sat in James’s usual seat it the dining hall and had pretended act like James for five whole minutes until James showed up and whacked the back of his head with his science notebook, making everyone erupt into laughter.

He saw James leave the dorm from his perch on the wall, but James started running in the opposite direction immediately, not noticing him. Remus wouldn’t have gone to say anything, anyway. It’s not like there was anything to say.

A few minutes, or possibly years later, Remus wasn’t sure, James’s mother walked out of the building, seemingly knowing exactly where he was. She offered him dinner, and then asked if he knew where James was. He spoke to her politely, as if nothing was wrong and his best friend wasn’t dead. She touched his shoulder and then walked away, down the street to find James. 

Remus got up and crossed the street, but couldn’t even imagine going back into the school with all eyes on him, so he sat in the middle of the sidewalk where he was, his blanket still thrown over him as his eyes burned treacherously. He pulled a leaf off of a plant beside him and shredded it systematically. 

Sirius had always liked having plants, although he always seemed to kill them. 

Remus shredded another leaf. 

One time, Sirius had given Remus a beautiful flowering succulent for his birthday, and Remus had liked it so much Sirius took to buying as many plants as he could fit in their dorm. 

He shredded another leaf. 

Maybe that’s why Sirius liked plants in the first place, Remus realized belatedly. 

Another leaf shredded. 

A hand fell over Remus’s, stopping him from his leaf massacre. James sat down beside him and swept the pile of leaf remains off of the sidewalk and into the street. They sat together and watched the street get steadily darker until James’s mother came out again, handing them each a burrito and sitting down with them for a while. She didn’t seem to know what to say either, finally settling on asking where they wanted to go for the night. They agreed to both go to James’s, since Peter had left to go home while they had been on their walk and neither wanted to be alone. James ate his burrito hungrily, but Remus looked at his and realized in that moment that he couldn’t swallow any food if it was force fed down his throat. He looked away disgustedly. 

In his childhood, Sirius and Remus had lived near a Mexican restaurant, and it was the one thing he and Sirius hadn’t agreed on. Sirius hated Mexican food, and Remus didn’t. 

Remus felt himself lean forward until he was practically lying on top of his crossed legs, his joints so flexible from his illness that he didn’t feel any pain, not that he would have noticed either way. He groaned, hitting his head on the concrete to try and stop himself from thinking of Sirius. It didn’t work.

James’s mother told them it was time to go soon after, when the sky had turned to a deep blue and Remus couldn’t think anymore. They piled into the car after quickly grabbing their stuff from the dorm, trying not to look at Sirius’s side of the room and how his belongings remained inside while they walked out of the door with theirs.

The drive was quiet, James’s parents in the front and Remus and James in the back.

“Can I have Sirius’s laptop?” James asked hopefully out of the blue. His parents looked back at him, scandalized, but Remus snorted.

“You probably don’t want to see what’s on there, mate.”

“James!” His mother scolded at the same time. James sent a look Remus’s way before saying, “it’s a coping mechanism!” To his parents, who seemed appeased by his explanation.

The rest of the dive was silent. Once they arrived, Remus had to take a deep breath before entering the Potter residence, feeling his world crash and burn just a little bit more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is based really closely on my experience of losing a best friend, so it's definitely not the most canon compliant. Thanks for reading! Feedback is always appreciated.


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